Twitter vs. the Victorians – here we go again
Responding to today’s headlines about leaks of the report of the Rose Review, the weariness in Jim Knight’s voice was obvious:
“Sir Jim Rose’s report has not been completed let alone published yet – but we are already getting stories about dropping this or removing that from the curriculum.
Of course pupils in primary school will learn about major periods including the Romans, the Tudors and the Victorians and will be taught to understand a broad chronology of major events in this country and the wider world.”
I know how he feels.
As far as we can tell, history is to remain compulsory but schools will have more scope to choose between particular periods to teach. Learning about new communications technologies, such as Twitter, may also be compulsory.
Predictably, the media have so far chosen to interpret this as a gain for technology and a loss for history in the simple zero-sum game that is space on the curriculum.
Is this fair? Well, Jim Knight clearly thinks not, if only because the review isn’t finished yet. We ought to be cautious about defending a report that isn’t out yet and that we haven’t read.
However, education debates have a long history of ignoring the reality of classrooms in the rush to having a good row. So it is perhaps worth making to simple point before we rush to judgement.
The review seems to have quite a traditional emphasis on mental arithmetic at the expense of calculators, and on primary age children having a strong sense of historical chronology rather than more specific and isolated modules of history.
The second is that making the pretty reasonable point that teaching primary age children how to thrive in their world in part through helping them understand spell checkers, online social networking etc. does not necessarily have much bearing on the content of what is taught.
Opening Minds schools are evidence that technology use can be a part of the way children learn through their everyday use in the classroom, but there still needs to be engaging and challenging subject content (like History). Teachers are not going to be leading children through the intricacies of Twitter week after week. Rather, this is encouragement to schools to ensure children will be using the internet for communications in the classroom day by day as a part of the way they work in class with their teacher, peers and parents.
I am a history graduate and I can think of about thirty reasons why children should be exposed to high quality history teaching, whether as part of a broad programme of study or in separate hour long sessions. As someone who cares about the subject, what isn’t clear to me is what is being lost to history. Meanwhile the gains of using technology everyday seem clear.
The danger is clear that the debate about this report will be cast as progressives vs. traditionalists. Rose’s only crime may in fact to conform to neither mould particularly, and be attacked by all.
Let’s hope for more considered coverage in future.
Children’s education and welfare – no going back
Directors of Children’s Services have the ‘job from hell’ since the merger of local authorities’ education and children’s services, according to John Dunford of the ASCL. His argument is that a remit that makes one person accountable for the overall welfare and outcomes of all children in the borough will inevitably lead directors to prioritise avoidance of extreme abuse and neglect, and make it difficult for schools to claim attention. His warning comes in the run up to the publication of Lord Laming’s review into the changes.
No-one should deny that the feedback of heads about the performance of their local authorities is important and needs to be listened to. Indeed, the growing number of vacancies implies that school leaders need more support than ever to meet the growing demands of government.
However, as the problems of implementation arising from this structural change become clear, and the growing demands for schools to take account of young people’s welfare and wider development are felt, it will be used to attempt to force a change in overall direction.
However, complexity and difficulty in implementation should not blind us to the importance of maintaining this direction of travel, particularly in the face of the coming years of austerity. It has been pointed out before on this blog that even though schools’ money will be relatively protected, a constrained public purse and a weak private sector means we will see the welfare needs grow particularly in disadvantaged communities.
Some will argue that the views of heads mean schools should narrow their aims and stop confusing the job of teaching kids rather than caring about them. Indeed, I have heard head teachers express that view in those terms.
However, if we are to provide an education suitable for the 21st century, one that is truly flexible and responsive education that takes young people’s needs seriously, we can’t go back. Instead we must create the local structures whereby effective networks of local providers, with schools at their heart, can deliver across the wider range of ECM objectives.
Incidentally, in this regard I was recently reminded of NCSL’s work with the Innovation Unit which is worth revisiting.
The Government don’t control the timetable, so why do we talk as if they do?
Debate whirled around the school timetable today. Should we change the school timetable to let teenagers start school at 11am? Maybe, maybe not. But the really confusing thing is, when did we all start thinking government tells schools when to open in the first place?
Russel Foster’s neuroscientific research into teenage concentration levels throughout the day suggests that young people over the age of 10 are more able to complete certain tasks in the afternoon than in the morning. The conclusion drawn by Monkseaton Community High School in North Tyneside was that they should therefore start their school day at 11am to be more in keeping with the natural rhythms of teenage brains.
This sparked a debate. Paul Kelley, headteacher at Monkseaton, has advocated the adoption of this approach more widely, though it is worth saying that they haven’t yet trialled the approach yet. Meanwhile, Roisin Maguire, the headteacher of St Joseph’s college in Stoke-on-Trent, said that she had observed that the opposite was true: that her pupils “slowed down” as the day progressed.
The debate is an interesting one, and it is great it is happening. We need innovation stimulated by new knowledge, but the differences in professionals’ views aren’t surprising. Diverse lifestyles, student and parent preferences, average distance from the school all surely play a part, meaning schools are likely to want to take different approaches and then argue about the advantages and disadvantages.
What is odd about the debate is the apparent misconception that all schools are told by government to open their doors to students at the same time. Instead of assuming diversity in the system, everyone from teachers’ unions to journalists speak as if schools must all do the same things at the same time and so the whole affair – like so much innovative work in education – is getting blown out of all proportion.
So, when reporters asked DCSF whether there were going to be any changes to the school timetable, and were told – quite correctly – that “timetables are a matter for schools and headteachers”, it gets translated into ‘the government refusing to change the timetable’.
The problem with education debates playing out this way is that, while schools can essentially teach when and where they like as long as they teach for a minimum number of hours per year, the fallacious but popular belief that government control this sort of thing gets perpetuated.
Wouldn’t it be better to have a debate that highlighted the potential for diversity and local control? The law does not specify how children should be taught, does not require year groups, or separate subject lessons, or the school timetable to be anything in particular, or even for schools to teach Monday to Friday.
The sooner schools, the wider public and the media realise that despite the pressures of Ofsted and league tables, our state schools are in fact free to do all sorts of things to meet the needs of their particular learners, the sooner parents, teachers, students and wider society are likely to actually get the schools they want.
Why do parents choose the schools they do?
It is exactly a year since I started working for the RSA. I remember because it was the day that thousands of 11 year olds and their families found out what secondary schools the children would be attending in September. This year the debate feels very similar to last year, although there is hope that the advent of the new report cards might end the repetitive round of the annual coverage.
Why should they? Because despite all of the press around school choice, the fairness or unfairness of lotteries, and how to stop middle class parents from monopolising the ‘best’ schools, there is still very little discussion of the basis on which parents choose schools – or of the kind of information parents are given in order to make these much vaunted choices. Government emphasis on academic attainment as a measure of school success (whether absolute in terms of bench mark GCSE scores, or relative in terms of value added measures) currently implies that parents should be choosing schools based on their position in the league tables. With a linear measure of success leading to a linear hierarchy of schools, the government is shooting itself in the foot when offering parents choice: by definition parents are not all going to be able to get their children into their first choice school if they are making the same decision on a crude single measure.
However, do parents in fact choose the ‘best’ school in the area in terms of academic performance, or do they tend to go with the closest to home? Does this vary by social group? Do parents visit the schools and determine which one their child would be happiest at, or do they listen to their children to see where their friends/bullies are going? Are choices made on the basis of school ethos, or an inspiring head teacher, or whether the school is an active part of its community?
It would seem from the case studies chosen by the press that many parents are afraid that their children will be ‘lost’ at the wrong school, get ‘crushed’ by the rowdy children that attend, not get enough attention for their special requirements or simply fade into the background in a large institution. Their choice of school seems predicated on where they believe their child will be happiest, rather than where they will get most GCSEs.
However, is it not the case that schools with middle class intakes tend to achieve better results? And that league tables as a single measure of school success can often be a rough proxy to the levels of discipline, middle class parents and general ‘leafiness’ of a school, at least in the popular imagination? Parents concerned for their child’s happiness may well give every appearance of choosing a school based on results, for they are given little else to go on.
With more information about schools available, and a different social consensus on what school is for, could we see a movement towards the happiest, most innovative, most welcoming to parents and community, or most creative schools being oversubscribed instead? Or, even better – more balance in what defines ‘a good school’ leading to more balance in the system, and less of a scramble for schools that are proven to be successful in one sense only?
The new report cards that are being proposed will give a far more balanced view of a schools’ performance in academic terms than the current league tables do. The inclusion of the Every Child Matters criteria in Ofsted reporting is another positive step. Let’s build on that progress and really send out the right message to parents, which is that schools vary in terms of more than social class and academic output.
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